Thursday, March 18, 2010

DENVER -- Colorado abortion opponents say they have enough signatures to put an abortion-ending proposal on the ballot this fall - potentially the first state this election year to see the question.

Abortion opponents turned in more than 46,000 signatures on Thursday, the second deadline for the ballot initiative.

The group needs only about 15,700 of those signatures to be deemed valid for the abortion question to go to ballots this fall.

The amendment would give unborn fetuses human rights in the state constitution, setting up a likely conflict with the U.S. Constitution over a woman's right to abortions.

Personhood USA, the Colorado-based group pushing similar measures in 40 states this year, says it's waiting on Mississippi officials to clear signatures and approve an initiative for the ballot this fall. In Montana, abortion opponents say they'll make a June deadline for about 50,000 signatures needed to make the ballot.

On March 4, the Colorado Secretary of State disclosed that 20.63% of the 79,648 signatures submitted by Personhood Colorado were invalid. As allowed by Colorado law, volunteers then had 15 days to replace the invalid signatures with new, valid voter signatures. That translated to over 1,000 signatures per day.

“Over the past few days, the massive quantities of signatures that poured in just amazed us,” remarked Gualberto Garcia-Jones, co-sponsor of the Personhood Ballot initiative.”That means that we collected over 2,600 signatures each day, about 2 signatures per minute. Some of our volunteers were working all hours of the day, and that is a testament to what we already knew – that Colorado citizens recognize the value of human life and have worked extremely hard to see that each human life is protected.”

The 700+ volunteer petitioners worked around the clock to gather signatures, frequenting churches, grocery stores, Tuesday Caucuses, and other public venues. Many college age church volunteers circulated the petition at Colorado St. Patrick’s Day Parades and college campuses.

“We were told that we needed to replace over 15,000 of our signatures,” commented Keith Mason, co-founder of Personhood USA. “We knew we could do it, because when you are working on such a critical, life and death issue, volunteers are passionate. We knew it would take a lot of hard work and determination, but we never expected such an outpouring of support. It is clear that the people of Colorado wanted to make a statement – that every human life should be protected by love and by law. This effort is more alive and vibrant than ever.”

“We’re so thankful for help from American Life League, Durago-based pro-life group LifeGuard, Personhood USA, and dozens of other pro-life organizations. With their help, we faced a daunting task and succeeded beyond our wildest expectations, glory be to God!” added Leslie Hanks, co-sponsor of the Personhood Amendment. “Now, we’re ready to begin campaigning for life and preparing for victory in November.”